A FORMER intensive care unit nurse has helped inspire a new Clint Eastwood movie which asks one of life’s biggest questions... is there life after death?

Dr Penny Sartori, from Swansea, was awarded a PhD by the University of Wales, Lampeter, for researching the spooky world of near-death experiences (NDEs) reported by patients at Morriston Hospital.

Now it has emerged that the 39-year-old’s work helped with the making of Hereafter, a Hollywood blockbuster on the subject.

The Eastwood-directed movie, out this weekend, is about people who have contacted relatives during their own NDEs, starring Matt Damon as a psychic trying to help people communicate with them.

Dr Sartori said: “Hereafter will help bring NDEs into the public consciousness. Very few patients volunteer the fact they have an NDE while seriously ill for fear of being ridiculed or not taken seriously.

“The movie will help further the debate about what’s going on when people have these experiences which are often life-changing.”

During her research, she placed playing cards on top of wardrobes to see if patients who claimed to “float” over surgeons’ heads could see them. No patients spotted the cards, but their graphic reports of meeting dead relatives and, in one case, being dragged to hell by demons, convinced her their brains were working after being declared dead, before they recovered.

She also found some patients could remember what doctors were doing or saying at times when instruments showed they were completely unconscious.

As well as helping Warner Brothers, Dr Sartori is taking a break from her nursing work in Swansea to write a book about her in-depth research, for which she received ethical approval from hospital bosses.

She is also involved in Aware (Awareness During Resuscitation), a global study launched by the Human Consciousness Project looking at those who experience NDEs.

Many describe floating towards a calming, bright light, where they see relatives beckoning them, then telling them to “go back”.

But one woman, who has since died, reported a “hell” experience of falling and being surrounded by frightening shapes and noises. Dr Satori said, however, most NDEs are positive.

She said: “One man, whose life signs completely went, later said he floated above his body. He described our attempts to revive him in perfect detail, even talking about a doctor who came in while off-duty then left.

“The patient’s eyes were not even open when this happened and he was not only unconscious he was clinically dead. The man described seeing a Jesus-like, bearded figure standing next to his dead father. He said the figure touched him on the hand.

“The amazing thing was that this patient, in his 50s, had suffered a life-long contracture of the hand from birth – afterwards the movement returned to his hand.”